I heard (only on this forum) that the V2 firmware upgrade is primarily to fix the disconnect/reboot issues when streaming with the iPhones. Since you’re saying that the v2 firmware upgrade is massive, do you have any more insights into what else they improve in the V2? It’d be very interesting to know, since the impression has been that they rushed this product to market.
I’m not 100%, but there’s been a massive re-write to the whole aid - bear in mind that the EEPROM overwrite is 25minutes for a pair of aids over the wires here. That means a considerable change to the firmware - my source hinted that it addressed some performance issues outside of the BLe that had been encountered in the first 6months of use. Oticon ARE going to be cloak and dagger about it, but the fact that they had the opportunity to scrub and start again would have allowed them to tweak the processing side, even if the changes were small.
Got another email from Oticon Tech Support today - re my questions from over a week ago: 1.) WHEN are you releasing a clip-on streaming device that is not part of the “IoT”, and 2.) what size power domes does Oticon have? The reply had a fair amount of “canned” yada yada, but eventually, my questions were answered here:
<<Streaming of calls and media audio are not available from Android devices at this time, and our ConnectLine Streamer and Streamer Pro are not compatible with the Opn instruments. Our developers are working on options to allow streaming from non-iPhone devices, and hope to release something later in 2017.
We have a variety of sizes and configurations of non-customized ear tips, and custom earmolds are another option. Only the provider can assess what is best physically and acoustically for a patient’s ears.>>
So, I don’t know if the clip-on streamer will be in my hands by Q1 2017, but y’know what? I don’t give a fig. I am already resigned to not only buy the Oticon Opn1, but also keep my Agil Pro and the old StreamerPro that still works BEAUTIFULLY with those aids. It is my lot in life to now stock two sizes of batteries (312 for minRITE, 13 for Agil Pro) and travel with all aids, both battery sizes, my streamer, and hey - how about a circus elephant while we’re at it. At least I’m covered for all events, cuz I’m really enjoying the HEALTHY ears that my Oticon miniRITEs give me.
It is like a miracle, but from the very first day I started wearing these Opns, I no longer have itchy-ear at day’s end! I love it. The sound quality is like 97% as good as my Agil Pros, there is no compatible streamer yet, the batteries last about half as long, it’s going to cost me sev’l thou for these new aids, I still have to fiddle-faddle with the LARGE Widex power domes to get them into my ear canal, the leash tends to BOING outta my ears, and yes, even tho this sounds like some kind of trial by fire, I’m still keeping the Opns. Go figure.
I’ll return to my aud-guy on the 21st and ask him to maybe shorten the wire a bit (which buckles with the LARGE power domes), and maybe re-attach a leash so it doesn’t poke out of my ears like a twig. I tried a (M) Widex power dome on these aids - and they fit my ear canal BEAUTIFULLY, but the sound quality was an order of magnitude poorer - no doubt due to suboptimal seal. Music sounded really tinny and harsh. I will simply have to adjust to the (L) power dome and be grateful for very decent sound - hallelujia!
It is like a miracle, but from the very first day I started wearing these Opns, I no longer have itchy-ear at day’s end! I love it. The sound quality is like 97% as good as my Agil Pros, there is no compatible streamer yet, the batteries last about half as long, it’s going to cost me sev’l thou for these new aids, I still have to fiddle-faddle with the LARGE Widex power domes to get them into my ear canal, the leash tends to BOING outta my ears, and yes, even tho this sounds like some kind of trial by fire, I’m still keeping the Opns. Go figure.
If the OPN’s sound quality is only 97% as good as your Agil Pros, and your Agil Pros still work perfectly, then why go through the trouble to replace it with the OPN, despite all the drawbacks you mentioned above? I assume that there must be some significant improvement on the OPN over the Agil Pros that makes you be willing to go through all this trouble.
The shorter receiver wire is really easy to change out. That was the first thing my audi did for me on the second fitting. It improves the fitting for me in many ways. I wear a size XL hat, which probably says something about my head dimensions being bigger than normal people, but the original receiver wire that came with the OPN was still too long for me.
Did you find the AutoPhone option working out for you, at least to tide you over until the ConnectClip becomes available?
XL ! You must be a brainiac! My hubs wears XL, and he’s the brightest EGG HEAD I know!
Thanks for reminding me about that AutoPhone mode! I did indeed ask my aud-guy about it last week, and he said he could enable it on the Opns for me, but what he’s found is that patients using this feature are often even more irked with AutoPhone than having NO phone-dedicated program. He said his patients tell him that if they move the phone just a TINY bit at all, the AutoPhone kicks OFF, then ON (as it hits the sweet spot), then OFF! ON! ON-OFF-ON-OFF! driving them nuts during phone calls. Augh.
I would experience the same thing with my older aids (I forget the brand now?) when using my mom’s phone. She had a battery thingamabob stuck on her phone’s receiver to enable her own ’s phone mode (was that for ?), and every time I’d put her phone up to my ear, my own aids would jump from default program to the other programs I had on it. It drove me so cuckoo that I figured AutoPhone may irritate me similarly.
As for keeping the miniRITEs despite their many flaws, I think the lightness, comfort and EAR HEALTH are my driving factors. I just got so tired of jack-hammering my Agil Pros into my swollen ear canals every morning, plus the left mold has never fit TIGHT, so I get constant, high-pitched sQueAk! every time I turn my head. Nope. It’s time for a change. And I am straddling the fence here, not willing to give up either aid (miniRITE nor Agil Pro), both of which offer pros and cons. I will definitely get some ear wire & leash trimmed on my next app’t, tho!
If the OPN’s sound quality is only 97% as good as your Agil Pros, and your Agil Pros still work perfectly, then why go through the trouble to replace it with the OPN, despite all the drawbacks you mentioned above? I assume that there must be some significant improvement on the OPN over the Agil Pros that makes you be willing to go through all this trouble.
The shorter receiver wire is really easy to change out. That was the first thing my audi did for me on the second fitting. It improves the fitting for me in many ways. I wear a size XL hat, which probably says something about my head dimensions being bigger than normal people, but the original receiver wire that came with the OPN was still too long for me.
Did you find the AutoPhone option working out for you, at least to tide you over until the ConnectClip becomes available?
I reply to my own post above (re the email from Oticon tech support), as I am reminded that the “answer” to my question about dome sizes was pretty lame. Why not be more informative and tell me that the domes come in 6mm, 8mm, 10mm, etc., as well as custom-mold domes if my audiologist recommends that? In fact, I’ve even learned that some manufacturer’s domes work with a different brand’s HAs, too! Ack, I felt kind of condescended to with the entire email. Like I’m some kind of sneaky rat coming in the back door to put my aud-guy out of business by buying silicone domes at Amazon.com or something.
Speaking of which, I’ve found ear wires, leashes, domes and naturally batteries for all aids available for purchase at MANY online sites. Aids have come out of the closet - finally! - and we have more choices on what to buy and put together to use with them. I like that. I’m not ready for Genie software on my laptop, but the flexibility that some have found with BUYHEAR.com is also encouraging!
Fitted several pairs both for demo and full V.2 versions.
Initial reception was fairly lukewarm until I worked out what worked and what didn’t: people are on upgrade cycles here from previous technology, some Lynx 1/Bernafon Brite/Older Oticon/Widex, plus there’s a newer slew of Unitron wearers fitted up to about five years ago. The response is pretty universal - ex-Sonova people can’t stand them and prefer the new Unitron Moxi Now, but a good proportion of the newer users like them (despite being put off by the price). However, the older non-Sonova wearers have 100% take-up, with only 1 baulking on the price.
This means that I don’t get that many coming through, but the ones that do from the older subset are very impressed with the performance - you could argue that anything replacing five year old tech is going to sound better, but there’s more to it than that. The softer processing seems to suit people who are used to less interference and obvious directionality control.
Hi,
Thanks for the feedback - interesting that the Sonova patients aren’t that keen on them, but everyone else is taking to them quite well
Just curious, what reason did the folks wearing the Unitron Moxi pros give for not liking the Opns? I’m wondering because i’m thinking of trialing the Opns and I have 4 yr. old Unitron Moxi pros now.
Bluejay -
I’ve trimmed my “leashes” down to length with a nail clipper - take a little at a time as you can’t add it back if you cut too much off!
The OPN leashes “collar” bump around the back of the receiver irritated my ear canal though so the Audi slid the collar (and attached leash) off.
I’ve never looked back…
AHH! That is exactly the tip I need here! I was afraid to nip my leash for fear I’d get it to a short stubby length that would JAB my ear somehow. I absolutely LOVE the leash! It helps me guide the dome into my canal as well as remove the aids without pulling on the receiver every day. I also think I need my ear wire re-shaped and shortened. Ideally, just following the wire down in front of the ears with your index finger should ensure a QUICK insertion of the dome. But I’m definitely wiggle-waggling, twisting and turning these wire/leashes like a corkscrew to actually get the (L) power dome to seat right in my ears.
I find all’s GOOD when I put my hands over my ears and there is not one bit of feedback at all. This is another thing I love about the Opn flexible dome vs my old Agil Pro hard-case mold. FIT. It’s critical.
Thanks so much for your advice! I will get my clippers out and see where we go with this…
Bluejay -
I’ve trimmed my “leashes” down to length with a nail clipper - take a little at a time as you can’t add it back if you cut too much off!
The OPN leashes “collar” bump around the back of the receiver irritated my ear canal though so the Audi slid the collar (and attached leash) off.
I’ve never looked back…
Think I’ll seal the deal soon with these, might be testing another run with widex or siemens, but will go with c-shell and 100dB once decided. No matter what people say about their “disappointment” they still sound better than anything out there and get the job done better… no matter how close they get to the marketing promise…
No matter what people say about their “disappointment” they still sound better than anything out there and get the job done better… no matter how close they get to the marketing promise…
I think the disappointment is due to the marketing hype that set up the expectation way too high and incorrectly, especially on the noise reduction which makes people compare its noise reduction against the old traditional way. But you’re right that it still sounds better than many things out there.
After having had it for about 6 weeks now, and after understanding how/where they apply noise reduction better now, based on reading up on their white paper and watching their seminar on audiologyonline.com3, which does a great job of explaining how they apply noise reduction differently than the traditional way, I found my experience as follows:
I’m not overwhelmed in noisy environments anymore. I think this is just due to the gradual brain hearing adjustment of getting used to the noisy environments as I wear these more often for longer. The ultimate goal here is not expecting the OPN to reduce noise for you. The ultimate goal is to let your brain learn to tune out the noise for you. The same is also true in less noisy environment but there’s still a few nagging static noises, like fan noise or road noise. I initially was very annoyed by it but now my brain is also learning to tune it out.
Now that I’m not overwhelmed in noisy environments, and now that I understand better where and how the noise reduction is supposed to be applied, I no longer look for noise reduced ambience as the end result. Instead, I specifically only look for “clearly defined” speech as the end result I try to focus on. Even if it’s very noisy around me, as long as I can still understand what’s being said in between all the noise, I would consider that “clearly defined” speech as successful attainment of the ultimate goal that Oticon set out to do. I think where Oticon marketing went wrong is trying to oversell noise reduction. What they should really sell is clearly defined speech despite being in a noisy environment. That is the heart of their signal processing strategy. Noise reduction is not the end game. Noise reduction is only as a means to the end game, and the end game is clearly defined speech. Wrong marketing focus, Oticon!
Now that I understand that they use the rear half of the hearing plane as the noise estimate to filter and generate clearly defined speech for the front half, I have lower expectation of being able to hear speech coming from the rear as well. If it’s loud spoken speech, I still expect to hear it because they have a Voice Activity Detector that’s supposed to freeze the Balance and Noise Removal modules to preserve the speech information even in the rear half of the sound plane. But if it’s soft spoken speech, I don’t expect to hear it because it gets blended into the rear half of the sound plane and becomes part of the noise estimate. There’s nothing I can do about it, but at least I understand enough now to lower my expectation in such situation. An example of this is like when you sit in the front row of a noisy car at freeway speed, and there’s a soft spoken female voice in the back row. If the female voice in the back row is not soft spoken, I would expect to hear it OK, although I may have to turn up the volume a notch or two or three. But if it’s soft spoken, I’d consider it lost to the noise.
I’m still not happy with any kind of noise reduction on these Opns. When I shop at Costco, WholeFoods, Trader Joes, et al, I find the ambient noise SO LOUD that I simply can’t hear the cashier. Maybe my brain will learn how to sort out the human voice from the conundrum around it … but WHY, oh WHY does the onus fall on ME and my poor overworked brain? With my old Agil Pros, I put them in Program #2 (for “NOISY” environments!) and voila! I can hear the human voice from the distracting ambient noise A-OK. It’s just discouraging. And what did Oticon say 4 years ago about that benefit, I wonder? Probably something like, “You’ll never have to work hard again to understand speech in a noisy place! In fact, your lazy brain can just go “DUUUUUUHHHH!” and you’ll still hear absolutely A-OK!” Now which world would YOU rather belong to.
Yeah, I’m still grousing about basic functionality on these aids that I’ll likely buy anyway. But note to Oticon Marketing: Please don’t tell me that my old brain will magically LEARN how to separate out speech from a BANGING, cacophonous environment around me.
I hear you, 1Bluejay, about your dissatisfaction with Oticon’s new approach to noise reduction. It’d be interesting to see how many other mfgs will join the Oticon “Open paradigm” bandwagon, and how many will refute that paradigm as a flawed paradigm and continue to develop noise reduction the traditional way. I guess time will tell how many users will buy into the OPN HA and paradigm and continue to keep them instead of returning them. So far I haven’t seen too many reported returns yet. But it’s probably still too new to tell. Um Bongo did mention that some of his (or hers?) patients who are a particular brand of HA (Unitron?) don’t convert to the OPN well.
What disturbs me the most is why Oticon can’t do both. Obviously they were able to do the traditional noise reduction just fine like everyone else before, apparent from the Agil Pros that 1Bluejay has. So why can’t they continue to offer this same technology, on top of the new technology, to help patients have a more seamless transition from the old paradigm to the new paradigm?
Yeah, Oticon can claim that they offer a directional program in their OPN HAs. But I’ve tried this directional mode and it doesn’t do the same level of noise reduction as I’m used to before with my older HAs. Instead it adds static floor noise to the directional program.
I would like to hear from others on their experience with Oticon’s directional program specifically. Does it seem to do an effective job on noise reduction on the OPN as your old HAs do?
I hear you, 1Bluejay, about your dissatisfaction with Oticon’s new approach to noise reduction. It’d be interesting to see how many other HA mfgs will join the Oticon “Open paradigm” bandwagon, and how many will refute that paradigm as a flawed paradigm and continue to develop noise reduction the traditional way. I guess time will tell how many users will buy into the OPN HA and paradigm and continue to keep them instead of returning them. So far I haven’t seen too many reported returns yet. But it’s probably still too new to tell. Um Bongo did mention that some of his (or hers?) patients who are a particular brand of HA (Unitron?) don’t convert to the OPN well.
What disturbs me the most is why Oticon can’t do both. Obviously they were able to do the traditional noise reduction just fine like everyone else before, apparent from the Agil Pros that 1Bluejay has. So why can’t they continue to offer this same technology, on top of the new technology, to help patients have a more seamless transition from the old paradigm to the new paradigm?
Yeah, Oticon can claim that they offer a directional program in their OPN HAs. But I’ve tried this directional mode and it doesn’t do the same level of noise reduction as I’m used to before with my older HAs. Instead it adds static floor noise to the directional program.
I would like to hear from others on their experience with Oticon’s directional program specifically. Does it seem to do an effective job on noise reduction on the OPN as your old HAs do?
I had some tweaks done at my last fitting that seemed to help at least with ambient noises. The main program was tweaked to be less aggressive with the “open” approach since my main complaint was that ambient sounds were actually being amplified. I’m still getting used to the new program tweaks, but I think they made somewhat of a positive improvement with speech in noise. I had 2 noisy Christmas parties this past weekend that I got through fairly well hearing-wise. I have a separate noise program that I think I will ask to be turned into a more traditional directional program and see how that compares to the general program when there is noise in the background (which is basically always for me).
I had some tweaks done at my last fitting that seemed to help at least with ambient noises. The main program was tweaked to be less aggressive with the “open” approach since my main complaint was that ambient sounds were actually being amplified. I’m still getting used to the new program tweaks, but I think they made somewhat of a positive improvement with speech in noise. I had 2 noisy Christmas parties this past weekend that I got through fairly well hearing-wise. I have a separate noise program that I think I will ask to be turned into a more traditional directional program and see how that compares to the general program when there is noise in the background (which is basically always for me).
Thanks for sharing on this, Tony. And glad to hear that the tweaks seems to help you on the noise issue.
Do you know specifically what the tweaks were? You mentioned that the main program was tweaked to be less aggressive with the open approach. Exactly what does that mean? Which parameter did the audi tweak specifically?
And it sounds like the tweaks you had wasn’t by having a traditional directional program, because you’re saying that you want to try the traditional directional program next. I would love to hear your opinion once you have tried to the OPN traditional directional mode to see how well it works for you. Obviously as I mentioned before, it doesn’t seem to work well for me, so I’d love to compare notes to see if it’s just me or if other people think the same way. Thanks.
Thanks for sharing on this, Tony. And glad to hear that the tweaks seems to help you on the noise issue.
Do you know specifically what the tweaks were? You mentioned that the main program was tweaked to be less aggressive with the open approach. Exactly what does that mean? Which parameter did the audi tweak specifically?
And it sounds like the tweaks you had wasn’t by having a traditional directional program, because you’re saying that you want to try the traditional directional program next. I would love to hear your opinion once you have tried to the OPN traditional directional mode to see how well it works for you. Obviously as I mentioned before, it doesn’t seem to work well for me, so I’d love to compare notes to see if it’s just me or if other people think the same way. Thanks.
I have the programming kit which Buyhear uses to remotely adjust the aids so I can view the screen real-time for the different settings that are being adjusted. There’s an option where they can choose low, medium or high for how aggressively “noise” is handled. There’s several different options to be honest. My prior setting was set at “high” and now they are at “medium.” He made that adjustment after I complained that ambient sounds were being amplified. And correct, I do not have a directional program set up right now, but I plan to ask for one in to be set up.
I have the programming kit which Buyhear uses to remotely adjust the aids so I can view the screen real-time for the different settings that are being adjusted. There’s an option where they can choose low, medium or high for how aggressively “noise” is handled. There’s several different options to be honest. My prior setting was set at “high” and now they are at “medium.” He made that adjustment after I complained that ambient sounds were being amplified. And correct, I do not have a directional program set up right now, but I plan to ask for one in to be set up.
Thanks, this is helpful.
In my regular program 1, with the 5 preferences I gave the software upfront, the noise setting in mine is set to medium in the first place.
When I complained to my audi about the ambient noise, she consulted with the Oticon trainer and the trainer advised her to have a second program for me where the noise is set to max to address the ambient noise issue. So it seems interesting that your audi decided to go from high back down to medium on the noise reduction setting in trying to improve the noise reduction. I think the difference there is that the low noise reduction setting is for a -5db reduction level, medium is -7db and max is -9db noise reduction.
It seems counter-intuitive that your audi went from high to medium noise reduction to try to reduce the ambient noise for you, because high noise reduction setting means maximum -9db noise reduction. But if for some reason it seems to work better for you then that’s what counts, I guess. And it sounds like you said it seems to work better for you now. anyway
As for my case, my program 1 (with medium noise reduction setting) and program 2 (with max noise reduction setting) doesn’t seem to make any noticeable difference for me. The most noticeable difference to me is that for some reason, the ambient noises don’t seem to bother me as much as initially anymore. I still hear them like before, it just that they no longer seem overwhelming or bothersome to me. My brain seems to now accept them as more normal now. So now I’m trying to focus more on whether I can understand speech in noisy situation or not, instead of having less noise in noisy situation.
But I agree that if you’re overwhelmed by the noise then you can’t focus on understanding the speech. You need to somehow overcome the noise issue first.
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